The blond and the second man came and stood with Carter over the unconscious man. Winston gathered him up, loaded him over his shoulder, grabbed his crutch, and walked out. He carried the man down the street and through the lobby of the New Deer Point Hotel, past a clump of tourists who probably thought this was a neat piece of local color, or maybe they thought the dusty black cowboy was taking the one-legged, unconscious, old man upstairs to have his way with him. He climbed the stairs and wedged Jubal between his shoulder and the wall while he got the door open. He dropped him onto one of the beds.
He sat at the window and looked out at the quiet street. It was a lonely life, he thought. Then he heard gurgling, coughing, and he saw that Jubal was having some kind of problem. He leaned over him. Jubal was choking because his dentures had gotten turned sideways in his mouth.
Winston sighed long. A cowboy touched a lot of things, he thought, blood, dung, placenta, but here he was, stone-chilled by the prospect of reaching in and pulling out the man’s dentures. But he did it. With a deep, held breath, he did it. He dropped the teeth on the nightstand between the beds and ran into the bathroom and washed his hands for a considerable time, nearly disappearing one of those little wafers of hotel soap.
He thought about turning on the television, but instead just undressed, opened the window wider, got into bed, and closed his eyes.
Next morning, Winston woke up and showered while Jubal was still unconscious, his snoring letting on that he was alive. Winston didn’t disturb him, just grabbed his sack of laundry and left the room.
While his clothes were in the machine he read back issues of Sports Illustrated and Newsweek and McCall’s and smiled at a little Indian girl who kept running down the aisle away from her mother, rolling a plastic bottle of fabric softener.
“How are you?” Winston asked the girl as he folded a pair of jeans.
The four-year-old just stared at him. She had big dark eyes and straight black hair that fell down her back in two braids. She was wearing a sweatshirt with a bear on it.
“My name is Jack. What’s yours?” He smiled at the woman who didn’t seem to mind him talking to the child.
“Mary Dreamer.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
The girl ran back to her mother, pausing to pick up a fabric-softener sheet off the floor. Her mother snatched it from her and threw it into the trash.
A man in a dirty coat with greasy, matted hair came in and pushed through the magazines on the counter before asking the woman for change. The woman pulled her daughter behind her and told him to go away. He walked over to Winston, smiled big, and showed a mouth with two lonely teeth. Winston could smell the whisky and, before the man could ask, gave him two quarters.
“Thanks, pard,” the man said in a loud voice, flashed the smile again, and went away.
The woman frowned at Winston, he assumed because he had given the scary man some money. Still, he said good-bye to the girl as he left.
When he got back to the room he saw that it had been ransacked. The sheets were off the bed and lying on the floor. One side of the drapes had been yanked down. Jubal was hopping around on his leg and pulling at his hair.
“What’s happening here?” Winston asked, dropping his laundry inside the door. He glanced quickly, nervously behind him and shut the door. “What are you doing?”
“My grinners. I can’t find my grinners.” Jubal looked at Winston with a pathetic face.
“You were choking on them last night, Jubal, so I took them out.”
Jubal looked sick. Here was a man who once sucked milk from a cow’s teat on a dare, but the idea of a man reaching into his mouth was about to make him ill.
“You were choking,” Winston said.
Jubal hopped back and sat on his bed.
“I put them on the nightstand.” Winston pointed and started toward the table.
“Well, they ain’t there now,” Jubal said and he shot up. “Jesus H. Christ on TV, somebody done stole my grinners.”
Winston was confused, dizzy, and he didn’t know what he was saying, but words came out. “I’ll go look outside.” With that he hurried out. He stood in the hallway looking at the closed door. There was no reason for him to go outside in search of the dentures, but he went anyway. It was someplace other than in that room.
He went out, leaned against the outside wall of the building, looked up at the sky, and let the sun hit his face. He blew out a breath, then found himself looking at the sidewalk and gutter and street. He heard humming coming from down the block and he glanced over to spot the lean man from the Laundromat walking his way. He looked back into the gutter.
“Howthodo,” the man said.
Winston studied the man and frowned.
“Howthodo.”
Winston leaned in close. “Say something else.”
“Wha thu wa ma sa?” The drunk’s mouth seemed peculiar. He had teeth, more that just the lonely two he’d shown before, weird teeth that seemed to move around.
Winston pointed at his mouth. “Where’d you get those?” he asked.
The man spat the dentures out into his dirt-crusted hand. “I bought ’em.”
Winston looked up at the window of his room. “How much did you pay for them?”
“A buck.”
“I’ll give you five for them,” Winston said.
The man pondered, then said, “Hell, they don’t fit no way.” He took the five-dollar bill from Winston and placed the teeth in his open palm.
Winston nearly fainted, actually swayed before collecting himself enough to sprint across the hotel lobby, and into the public rest room. He set the teeth on the sink and began to wash his hands furiously. One of the tourists standing at a neighboring sink seemed frightened. “Found my friend’s teeth,” Winston said. The man ran out. Winston washed for many minutes. He grabbed the dentures in a couple of paper towels and took them upstairs to the room.
“Found them,” he said as he stepped in.
Jubal let out a sigh. “Thank you, Jesus, thank you, thank you,” he said. He took them from Winston and paused. “Where’d you find them?”
Winston coughed, cleared his throat. “I found them in the street, Jubal, just lying there.”
Jubal blew out a whistle between bare gums. “Good.” He took them to the bathroom and held them under the water. He loaded them into his face and worked his jaw a bit.
Winston went to the window and started to put the room back together. He slipped the curtain hooks through the rod eyes. Below he could see the derelict turn the corner and pass out of sight.
“Just lying in the street, huh?” Jubal asked.
“Just lying there.”
“Funny. Wonder how they got down there.”
Winston turned to look at Jubal, thinking that the man didn’t believe him. But Jubal showed nothing but puzzlement as he began to help put the room back together. Winston was pretty sure that Lucius Carter had come into the room and taken the teeth, but he wasn’t going to talk about it with Jubal.
“You know, a man can walk in his sleep,” Jubal said. “Won’t have a notion in the morning of where he’s been.”
“Not uncommon,” Winston said.
“I ain’t never known myself to walk in my sleep.”
“Hmmm,” Winston said.
Jubal had the sheets and covers on top of the two beds and he sat down on his. “I want to thank you for helping me out last night. When I was choking, I mean.”
“You bet.”
“A dentist suggested I use some of that sticky stuff, you know, to hold my teeth firm, but I can’t stand it. Too much maintenance.”
Winston nodded, putting up the second curtain.
Jubal went to the window and looked at the street. “Just lyin’ there,” he said more to himself than to Winston. “Top and bottom together?”